Joe Biden Counters Tesla CEO Elon Musk's Hydrogen Skepticism With Optimism: 'Emissions Reductions … Will Be The Equivalent Of…'

President Joe Biden on Friday announced $7 billion in funding for hydrogen hubs to develop clean hydrogen as an alternate energy source for sectors including heavyweight transportation, contrary to the opinions of Tesla Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk.

What Happened: The emissions reduction from the hydrogen hubs will be equivalent to taking 5.5 million gasoline cars off the road, Biden wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“That’s no joke,” the President added.

The Biden administration, on Friday, selected seven regional clean hydrogen hubs to receive $7 billion in funding in a bid to accelerate the market for clean hydrogen.

“The seven selected regional clean hydrogen hubs will catalyze more than $40 billion in private investment and create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs — bringing the total public and private investment in hydrogen hubs to nearly $50 billion,” the White House said in a statement.

These hubs are looking to produce more than 3 million metric tons of clean hydrogen per year to de-carbonize sectors including heavy-duty transportation and chemical, steel, and cement manufacturing. 

Why It Matters: Musk, meanwhile, is a critique of hydrogen as a potential energy choice for vehicles. "Hydrogen is a staggeringly dumb form of energy storage for cars," Musk said in May 2021. The CEO then opined that the most compelling use for hydrogen is for rocket upper stages and even then is “barely worth considering.”

He reiterated the same again earlier this year while also criticizing government funding for hydrogen trucks. "Bizarrely, government funding is still being directed to hydrogen trucks. It is idiotic," Musk wrote in August.

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